Who is your guide?
Our family of five took a trip out to Arizona and Utah for fall break. Right off the bat, there are a few things you need to know:
-We are not an outdoorsy family. We don’t hike. We don’t camp. We don’t rough it. Our collective family skill sets include coloring, hand lettering, enjoying artisanal food, watching documentaries, and shopping, not necessarily in that order.
-Our three daughters are currently aged 16, 15, and 5. At this stage, even choosing a family movie that is appropriate for a kindergartener and still attractive to the rest of us is a legitimate challenge. Two kids have outfits planned for each day of the trip and want to sleep until 10am. The other one wakes up at 6:30, excited to check out the hotel pool. Again.
-I tried to cancel this trip twice. I was sweating it. Let’s go to Chicago! I said to Ty. Let’s eat pizza and walk the city and visit museums! It’s the Pattison Family way, I said.
Instead, we went to the Grand Canyon.
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This might be our first rodeo out west, but we’re no dummies. Ty booked tours at our stops, and Sedona was first on the docket. We are not about to wander around the red rocks of Sedona trying to guess what those beautiful geological stripes are all about (it turns out they are called layers), only to end up lost and just as clueless as when we started.
So, we booked a jeep tour. This particular tour was with the Pink Jeep Company, which has a long-standing history in the Sedona area and has grown into a national presence with excursions available all over the country.
We were set to tour Scenic Rim and Broken Arrow. These names mean nothing to us. Sounds great. Very adventurous. We meet our tour guide, Mike.
Mike is wonderful: He’s friendly, knowledgeable, and engaging. Probably in his early sixties, Mike sports a lean and athletic frame topped off with silver hair. I don’t know: he could be in his fifties or his seventies; honestly—he’s ageless. As we take off towards our destination, he tells us about his past life with a career in wealth management, but he’s always had a passion for off-road biking. He’s been into bikes his whole life, and the call of the outdoors led him and his wife out to Sedona from their lifetime home of California. She is a practicing radiologist and a competitive trail runner. He’s been doing Jeep tours for the last five years because he loves the outdoors, loves people, loves Sedona. He calls it his “fun retirement gig.”
The Scenic Rim is indeed just that: a rim. One slip, and it looks like we will be over the edge. Our tires waffle between rocky chunks of old pavement and weeds growing along the edge of the rim. I feel woozy looking down as we quickly bump along the old broken-down ledge. Mike clearly loves what he does; he chats, laughs, and answers questions as we glide along the rim. I exhale: I can sense his experience and control of the situation and I feel at ease. We are in good hands. What looks precarious to me is nothing to this seasoned guide.
Then we crossed over to Broken Arrow, where Mike took our Jeep up and down boulders the size of my house. I braced myself as we took paths that looked—frankly—impossible, but he persisted and demonstrated—with a wink and a nod—how with the right equipment, training, and person: even the impossible becomes achievable.
We learned about geology and rock forms, Sedona’s history, and the area’s demographics. We scaled rocks I never thought conceivable and captured views like nothing I’d seen. All five of us bumped along together in the back of an open-air jeep, and I think it was my favorite part of the whole trip, thanks to Mike.
He was an excellent guide.
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Now, let me introduce you to Matt.
I determined that it would obviously be great if we could ride horses together… so wild west of us! The Pattisons on Ponies! But upon a quick google search, it became clear that almost every equestrian adventure had a minimum age requirement of six years old. Eden is only five, so as I emailed and called places, I was delighted to get a response from one of the tour companies letting me know five is fine. It was odd since their website clearly said six was the minimum. Perhaps this cavalier wishy-washy attitude about age requirements should have been my first clue about how these shenanigans would go, but I forged ahead, regardless.
When we arrived in a no-name town about an hour outside Sedona at Good Times Family Farm or some such generic misnomer, we could all sense that some things were amiss.
We pulled into an empty dirt parking lot. A sign outside the office door read, Warning. No trespassing. We have guns and shovels. And as I climbed out of the car, a goat came over to greet me. That’s when I noticed how many goats were wandering around the area. So many free-range goats. Old and new piles of animal poo covered in flies were obstacles to avoid on the route up to the office. I mean, it’s a working farm, I told myself as I took it all in.
A man in saggy pants and a worn-out t-shirt walked briskly across the farmyard with a cigarette in one corner of his mouth. He yelled towards me: If you need to use the bathroom, I can’t promise anything… the goats have been in there all morning! And he gestured across the yard to an open door in an outhouse.
My curiosity—and my bladder—got the best of me, and I went to take a peek. The goats had indeed been there, and all the toilet paper was eaten. The water didn’t work. Neither did the lights, which was a creative challenge since it was a pitch-dark, windowless room.
My family piled on a picnic table in the shade to wait and warily eyeballed one another as we swatted away all of the flies. (So. Many. Flies… and goats).
The same gentleman came to get us and walked us over to the horses. As he led us across the barnyard, he told us how the morning had been really crazy because one of his boys had left the fence open, and the bison had gotten loose and been running all over the streets. It took them all morning to get it contained again.
Oh boy.
This is when I first laid eyes on Matt. He didn’t introduce himself. He wore reflective glasses like the ones used for snow skiing, more an eye mask than glasses, so I never saw his whole face. Matt was probably about 21 years old, had long, stringy hair, and spoke in a monotone, disinterested voice as he told us how to ride a horse:
Have you all ridden horses before?
Not really, I say. Just a few times. But my little one has never ridden before today.
Here’s what you need to know, he says. Hold the reigns, and when the horses bend down to eat grass out there on the trail, yank them up really hard with a quick snap or else they’ll just wander further towards more grass. Ya gotta give them a good, firm snap. And if they stop moving, kick them here (as he shows us the belly area) and not here (hind quarters).
I look at the horses. I look at Eden. She’s five years old, and she’s never been on a horse before. I can’t imagine her having the command of an animal ten times her size. She is clinging to her daddy’s hand. All of this feels way above her pay grade and quite possibly mine.
Can she ride on the same horse as her dad? I ask as I point to Eden.
Matt is annoyed by the question. If I could see his eyes, I think they would be rolling at me. He whips out his cell phone to call his manager and mumbles into the phone, This lady wants her kid to ride on the same horse as her dad. Huh. Mmmhmm. Okay. Click.
No, he says.
The best I can do is pony her.
What does that mean, I ask. How do you pony her?
I tie her horse to mine and hold on to it the whole time.
Okay. That’ll do, I concede.
After lining up to get on the horses, there are more muddy instructions about mounting and dismounting, and pushback on my request for helmets: You ALL want to wear helmets? Matt is bewildered. I look around the barnyard, the goats, the flies, the bison that was just retained, and finally back at Matt himself. Yes. I want helmets for everyone. We aren’t told the horses’ names. Eden is putting on a brave face while quietly crying.
As we set off on our journey, Matt is sitting side saddle on the lead horse with a rope attached to Eden, and he pulls out his cell phone to begin scrolling. Matt spends most of our trail ride scrolling on his phone. I asked him how he got into trail riding. I used to do the rodeo, he says.
The first part of our ride leads us under an interstate overpass, and I attempt to tamp down my fear that one of these horses will get spooked. All we need is one truck blowing its horn, one engine to backfire, one car gunning. We’re going to be on the news, I think. I can see it now: Knoxville family suffers tragic loss while on vacation.
My legs squeeze the horse so tightly that I can barely breathe. This all feels so wrong. There are no explanations, no smiles, no laughter. There is nothing here that’s engaging or delightful. With each turn, I am less at ease rather than more. I want Matt to give me just one indication that he understands my fear, that he’s in control, and that he’s got this.
I get nothing. We are on a guided tour, but we have no guide.
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The last time I wrote, I mentioned an upcoming surgery at MD Anderson for my Lymphedema. It’s called a lymphovenous bypass, and patients have fantastic results with immediate differences in their arms. My surgeon explained how they sometimes find 5 or 6 blocked areas in each arm, sometimes only 2 to 3, but regardless, the patients see a difference in their swelling.
Lymphedema is a side effect of my breast cancer surgeries. Most people with Lymphedema have one arm affected. In me, it affects both arms and hands, which is tricky. It’s the hands that are so troublesome and not common. You can read more about the challenges of this in my last blog, so I won’t belabor the point here, but I was really looking forward to the surgery. Finally, I can wear more normal clothes again with regular sleeves! I can return to standard compression garments instead of these crazy Michelin Man sleeves. I can type again! I can pick up my needle points again! And maybe I can even unscrew lids and stop dropping everything… the possibilities are endless once this surgery is complete.
What is the phrase: We make plans, and God laughs?
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We flew to Houston. We stayed for a week. We had pre-op appointments and bloodwork and were given all the care instructions.
But the surgery was not successful. This was the same surgeon who facilitated a super complex, complicated, 14-hour surgery one year ago that saved my life. This time, what was supposed to be a simple outpatient surgery to relieve Lymphedema was a non-starter.
My arms are so blocked that the injected dye cannot travel up the limbs to indicate where the blockages are. The surgical team spent 4 hours looking for blockages so they could reroute them. And in an irony of all ironies, I’m so blocked that they couldn’t find the blocks.
About 5% of these surgeries are unsuccessful. The other 95% are wildly successful.
Lucky me.
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I don’t know why. I keep reminding the Lord that he is the same God who parted the Red Sea… what’s a little fluid in my arm?
2 Kings 3 tells the story of a dry land becoming flowing water. Verse 18 says, This is an easy thing in the eyes of the Lord. And I know it’s easy—It’s easy for Him. It’s just not easy for me, or apparently for my highly trained surgical team.
You may find yourself sitting in the middle of hard. You are incapable and unable to make the changes you long to see. You’ve done all the right things, all the things you know to do. And you look up at the heavens and cry out: You can make all of this disappear. So why don’t you? This is an easy thing in the eyes of the Lord…
I feel your pain, and I don’t have an answer.
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Psalm 23 is probably one of the best-known, beloved passages in the entire Bible, and I’d love for you to read it slowly. Take it in one bite at a time, chewing on it as you go:
The Lord is my shepherd;
I have all that I need.
He lets me rest in green meadows;
He leads me beside peaceful streams.
He renews my strength.
He guides me along right paths, bringing honor to his name.
Even when I walk through the darkest valley,
I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me.
Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me.
You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies.
You honor me by anointing my head with oil.
My cup overflows with blessings.
Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life,
And I will live in the house of the Lord forever.
In the first half of the Psalm, the writer is content and comfy in soft green grass and a solid water supply by a clear blue stream. The circumstances are plush. There are no worries: “I have all that I need.” The author speaks to the listener… the author knows about God: He lets me, he leads me, he guides me… He, he, he.
Then suddenly, the writer finds himself in a dark valley—a naturally scary place—and the language changes to a direct, personal address: You are close beside, You protect and comfort, You prepare a table, You honor me… You, you, you. The author talks to God himself. The author knows God.
Is it possible that these “Valleys of Death” or “darkest valleys” (depending on the translation) can be places of deeper connection? Do I trust God or the green meadows and peaceful streams he’s provided in the past? What matters most to me when those slip away and I find myself in a season—or even what may feel like a lifetime—of a dark valley?
Verse four says it all: Even when I walk through the darkest valley,
I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me.
We want a good guide. We need a good guide. We want someone who knows when to make a joke and laugh with us, when to teach us, and when to just hold our hand as we walk alongside together in silence.
You have a dark valley. Who is leading the way with you? This may be the most critical question you’ll ever answer. It’s more important than, Why? Why me? What good will come of this? You may not like it; I certainly don’t. You may not understand it; we aren’t promised that we ever will.
Are you bumping along with Matt, scrolling on your phone, and disengaged from reality, hoping all of this will go away soon? Are you letting your Inner Matt be your guide through the Valley of Death? A ‘just pony me through this’ cavalier attitude?
Or are you beholding the beauty and intentionality of the journey, even in the dark valley? Can you hand it over to the experienced guide who will take you with him to scale heights you never imagined possible?
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I learned something new on our Jeep Tour in Sedona. Do you know what two forces made those beautiful layers form in Sedona however many thousands of years ago? What did these magnificent, otherworldly rock formations we know as the Red Rocks come from?
Collision and Pressure.
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I’ve never been so happy to be finished with something. As we returned under the overpass an hour later on our trail ride, finishing up our horseback tour adventure, I noticed a beautiful white wildflower open in the sun by the underpass, and I mentioned it to the girls.
Matt perked up. That flower’s cool, he said. At night it closes up tight, and during the day, it opens up for the sun.
Well, thank you, Matt. I saw a correlation to the horseback ride I had just taken. I was eaten up by fear and nerves, and worry. The trail wasn’t hard. I wish I could enjoy the scenery and appreciate the whole experience, but I was too busy clinging for dear life, breathing deeply, and worrying about Stupid Matt up there.
You see, the journey wasn’t actually the problem. Even the horses weren’t an issue. It was that I didn’t trust the guide. Because of that, like the Arizona flower at night, I was closed up tight, unable to take in the sun, the joy, and the pleasure of the whole adventure.
Isn’t life just one great adventure to behold?
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And so, I’m ponied up to my Good Guide, waiting to see what’s next. My hands are off the reigns, which is probably best because I can’t grip very well these days, anyway. I still wrestle with him and ask questions that sit unanswered, but I’m also attempting to take in the scenery, enjoy the beauty, and peer ahead to where He may be leading me next.
